Krish

I first heard the name J Krishnamurti from a colleague, whose name was Krishnan, a variant of the same name. On Sundays and holidays Krishnan used to read out passages from krishnamurti's book while we gathered round him. Bright bead-shaped eyes gleamed on a small dark face as Krishnan read out from The Impossible Question. That was thirty years ago in a rented house in Madras, as it was known then. 

Krishnan wanted to discuss the book with me and another colleague, but we were not prepared for it. He read out loud a passage and asked me if I understood. My immediate response was a knee-jerk reaction: did he think I was incapable of understanding English? Did he think I was a nitwit, that I couldn't follow serious stuff? Krishnan was taken aback and tried to reason with me. I was beyond reason, for emotion had overtaken me. The reading ended on a bitter note. 

There were some more readings after that, but they were more guarded in nature. Krishnan used to say that that there were no pat answers to our questions, like whether there is God or why there is so much suffering in the world. They were the "impossible questions" he, like most of us, had sought answers for. 

I was not so much interested in such questions, not yet anyway. I was at that time interested in knowing about the man Krishnamurti - whether he was a Tamilian like Krishnan; or, in spite of his ambiguous name, he was a Telugu like me, or like  S Radhakrishnan, the ex-President of India, respected for his erudition. I went to Higginbothams on Mount Road to check out some more books of Krishnamurti. I hoped to find from their blurbs that a man whose books are so well received by many people around the world belonged to the Telugu speaking tribe of South India. I suspected that he might turn out to be a Tamilian after all, for why should Krishnan be so much interested in him? I purchased The Second Penguin Krishnamurti Reader for the following reasons:
1) Krishnamurti appeared to be somebody great, considering the raving praise for his writings
2) I was beginning to get interested in the things he was writing about
3) my parochial instincts were losing their power over me. 

Today I feel I owe it to Krishnan for introducing Krishnamurti to me. 

Krishnan and I separated shortly after that and we went our separate ways, but the books of J Krishnamurti have never left me since. My interest in his writings was growing and I often found myself talking about them with my friends. About four years later, after the news of J Krishnamurti's death, another friend gifted me Pupul Jayakar's biography of Krishnamurti. From the book I came to know that Krishnamurti had asked Ms Jayakar to his biography. This fact had somewhat diminished the man's stature in my eyes.  By that time I had come to know that Krishnamurti was already very well known around the world. Why did he need another biography? Was he not already famous? I had remarked to my friend, who merely seconded what I said. Later, as I continued to read the book I understood that his earlier biographies were tainted with Victorian slant and that there was a need to produce an authentic version with Krishnamurti's concurrence on every piece of written text. Another instinctual reaction out of the way, I sailed along merrily with the book, diving as deep as I could into his talks, given my self-imposed limitations, and surfacing now and then to realize how much his life and thoughts were affecting me. 

During that time I was overseeing the work of a man about whom I heard that he was rather disturbed and couldn't think coherently as a result of his obsessive study of Krishnamurti's writings. He was also allegedly unsettled and changed jobs often. Although my interactions with the man were few and far between, I did not find him as described by his colleagues. I never brought up the matter of Krishnamurti with him. Nor did I feel inclined to do so, partly because I barely knew him and partly because I was totally confused myself about what Krishnamurti was actually saying. I found Krishnamurti quite unsettling myself and the rumours about a fellow Krishnamurti reader were anything but encouraging. 

I found Jayakar's description of Krishnamurti's early life intriguing. The fluidity of the narrative absorbed my interest like a whodunit. While I found no answers to my "my impossible questions", the book managed to evoke more questions in my mind equally difficult to deal with. I remember reading the story of the Buddha when I was small from an illustrated book. I read it over and over again with fascination of how a boy was so gentle and sympathetic to birds and how sad he felt when his cousin shot one down with an arrow. I felt the same kind of recurring interest reading the life of Krishnamurti. 

Until I came upon Krishnamurti I was an avid reader of books, both fiction and non-fiction. However, my encounter with Krishnamurti's books changed all that. I could no longer take sufficient interest to read through a book. I feel there is nothing I could gather by way of knowledge or understanding from reading any other book except Krishnamurti's. Even though I was unable to follow his mental peregrinations, I felt compelled to return to his talks again and again. 

There were times when I couldn't 'talk over together' as he often invites in his talks, but I found it also difficult to put down the book. Sometimes I felt exasperated with the line of talk or the repetition of ideas and refuse to go further with it. But I could not pick up other books to read as I used to do. One day as I sat on the veranda of my home wondering what on earth this man was talking about in one of his books/talks. It was evening: the heat was bearable and not a leaf stirred. I was vexed with Krishnamurti and felt he was splitting hairs over trivial issues with his analytical skill, but not really showing anything by way of practice. I felt I was wasting time over such useless stuff, when without warning a sudden gust of wind blew across the place. It rose with a whooshing sound and threw sand in my direction. Before I could blink the sand had entered my eyes and hurt badly. An old saying rushed into my mind: woe betide a man who speaks ill of a good man. 

I sometimes talked over matters concerning culture and spirituality with some close acquaintances. On one occasion someone said that it was all maya, an illusion. Everything there is, is but a fancy of the mind. The real is not perceivable by the senses and the world is a figment of our imagination. We were sitting round a low center table. Whenever someone spoke of these matters I would remember what Krishnamurti said. This time I remembered clearly that he said the objects in the universe and in our world were as real as the 'telephone over there'. Maya, if I understood him right, is not about the things of this world but about the things of the mind. The world as we experience physically is different from the world as we experience it mentally. It is the psychological world that we all have created together that is illusory. The physical world of the objects and the senses that interact with them are as real as the paper weight on the center table before us. So I began pushing the glass weight slowly towards my friend. He became a bit alarmed as it kept coming towards him and asked me to desist. He pulled his leg closer by the instinct of self protection. I asked if everything was maya, why, even this action and its consequence should also be ignored as illusion. 

Until about twenty I was a firm believer not only in the omnipotent omniscient God, but also of the particular kind projected by the Hindus. Especially the trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, representing the beginning, the sustaining and the ending of all that there is in the universe. When I was but a boy I once had a dream of Vishnu, whose manifestation on earth was Lord Krishna, in all the splendor in which that god is invested with. However, as I became older, read more, and thought more, I became less inclined to believe in the gods. The ending of the belief was the beginning of confusion, sustained by Krishnamurti.